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Forum:Ibanez Wiki Portal
For everybody's browsing needs, a full network of content portals is currently under development for Ibanez Guitar Wiki in the new Portal . It's far from finished, but you can already have a look around to get the idea (START HERE). Feel free to leave some new ideas here! -''Bram'Talk!'' 19:38, May 18, 2010 (UTC) :They're called the Ibanez Wiki Portals now, obviously. ''BramTalk! 21:32, December 16, 2010 (UTC) ::In celebration of the addition of the 2012 models to the wiki, I've been working today on creating the 2012 portal. It's still a work in progress. At this point it's basically just a grid showing all the guitars that are documented on the site that were available in 2012. I'm not really sure how useful it is, but it's sure colorful. ;) Please take a look and let me know what you think. \m/ '''DeeJayKTalk!'' 22:55, April 28, 2016 (UTC) :::As I said on the other thread, your new Portal:2012 = best idea ever! I like it so much <3 :::Let's say the wiki is up-to-date with all models up to 2016. The Portal:2016 (with your new flashy layout, not this old-looking one) MUST be stick to the wiki index page, FIRST link, not to say the ONLY link available. It is the best starting point to encourage people to visit the wiki. Well, making it the ONLY link is a little too much of course, but it looks more important (to me) than any other link on the index page: :::As we talk about this, the index page is made of 2 main parts (save the blogs and right-menu): :::*The one with the big images: :::**New Models (Portal:2015) :::**Guitar Series (Category:Guitar series) :::**Parts (Category:Parts) :::**Views and background (Category:Views and Backgrounds) :::*Below, the one with "Icon" box: :::**Guitar series (Portal:Guitar series) :::**Guitar models (Portal:Guitar models) :::**Parts (Portal:Parts) :::**Views and backgrounds (Portal:Views and Backgrounds) :::**Expanded Ibanez Universe (Portal:Expanded Ibanez Universe) :::So we have a mix of everything and nothing here, redundant contents included . Most of the time, you click on something, but the page you land on doesn't make you wish to go any further. None of these pages are "sexy" enough to keep you entertained. Of course all of them are useful, very useful -provided you already know the wiki by heart, knowing how to navigate in this maze. I'm sure the wiki creator was full of good intentions in the early stages of the wiki, but the final result may not be what he was expecting in the first place ;) :::Long story short: the Portal:2012 is the best thing I've seen on the wiki in terms of navigation (my 2 cts of course, sometimes I can be a little extreme with my "constructive feedback" so plz don't take everything word-for-word). --KainTGC (talk) 01:02, May 7, 2016 (UTC) ::::First off, I'm glad that the Portal: 2012 page works for you. I'm still trying to figure out if I should add some more narrative to the page to describe what was new and interesting from Ibanez in that year. If so, should that text appear at the top, or below the model grid? ::::I tend to agree that the main page navigation is a bit of a jumble. I've made some changes to the front page, but they have mostly been of the cleanup variety. The boldest change I've made was probably adding the "External Links" box and removing the social networking links since those accounts/links were either broken (in the case of FB) or simply unused (in the case of Twitter). Other than that my changes have mostly just been swapping out a few images and editing the copy. ::::This cautious approach is largely by design for two reasons: 1) I haven't yet formulated a "grand vision" of what the navigation should look like and 2) to avoid introducing too much change all at once to avoid or minimize the ruffling of feathers of those who have been using the site longer and may be attached to the current structure. ::::As far as what the end state should be, I like the idea of featuring the yearly portals (particularly the current year) very prominently, once they are built out. Beyond that, I think the rest of the navigational layout depends on what we end up doing with the sort of still-born portal structures. :::::I wouldn't change a thing to the Portal:2012. I like it the way it is, with just a simple sentence to introduce the whole page. I know what you're thinking about, that is, to write a full lecture about the new models, new series, hardware updates and so on. But it will make this page veeery long and it is already a long page. Moreover, all these changes are already introduced on the guitars pages, like "the wizard 14 neck has been replaced by the wiwizard in 2012". I would prefer to keep this page "as is", and why not, creating a new one for "2012 changes" (with links between Portal2012 and Changes2012), if you really feel like it. 2 cts. :::::I said nothing about your cleanup/changes on the index page because to me it goes in the good direction, and so far these are "minor" updates that won't, I hope, p.ss off the long-times users. Big changes and fast-pace editing can be badly received -even if it's for the sake of a wiki/fansite- so I agree with you on this. :::::Now that you speak about the "grand vision" of the wiki, I've got something on my mind that would definitely change our life here (making browsing much easier for the 'normal users', as well as managing sections a more efficient way for the 'wiki editors'). It's a bit too soon, I need to think about it twice because it's a complete overhaul of this wiki structure. And the good news is that nobody will ever miss the "ancient browsing method", the new one on my mind will be 100% transparent. Tomorrow I'll edit a few pages as an example, explaining "my vision" on a different thread. --KainTGC (talk) 21:30, May 7, 2016 (UTC)